Why I Have Like Having Long Hair

Many people ask me why I don't cut my hair.  It's an innocent question that causes me to be infuriated at the culture that raises people to believe in the sanctity of sexual dichotomy.  Here are some reasons that I do not cut my hair to make it short:

I like the feel of running my hands through long hair.

I like how it falls on my neck and shoulders.

I like having something to groom.

Despite the fact that it frequently looks messy and unkempt, which causes me insecurity and makes me feel uncomfortable in social situations, I like the way that it can look when I treat it well.

I hate gender norms.  The fact that having long hair is considered womanly by my culture encourages me to have long hair.

Having long hair as a man functions as a social litmus test.  The things people say about my hair give me insight into their participation in cultural norms and their aesthetic judgments.

I don't feel obligated by convention to get my hair cut, and I don't foresee making it short.  End of story.

Summer Changes Things

I've been feeling really good lately.  I've been playing games, having good conversations, eating my own cooking, spending time with phenomenal housemates, reviewing basic Spanish, reviewing cell biology, presidenting the glee club, clothes shopping, cleaning the house, and learning Java.

I'm... happy.  It feels weird to say that anymore.  But I think I can get used to this feeling.  I feel free.  I remember feeling like this years ago.

Ha!  I've been laughing.

I'm still aware of what prevented me from being happy.  But now it just doesn't hurt so much.  I have enough positive things in my life to keep me going, and I have hope for finding more.

And if there's one thing I have to do, it's to protect hope.

Walk Instead

When I write in my journal, it's frequently analytic, introspective, or gushing emotion.  Today I decided to walk around the beautiful neighborhood I now inhabit, and the nearby campus.  I wrote in my journal something much more enjoyable than usual.  It felt good.

[I don't write for an audience.]

"I'm sitting at a pond.  Passion puddle.  There are geese, an applauding fountain, kids playing with volleyballs and badminton, more types of life and green than there are buildings, and a scattered few papers around the bench I'm on.  There's a feather on the ground before me, many pebbles in the mud, deepening shadows, ripples and reflections, duckweed, and handsome large rocks.  The sky is clear blue, the air is filled with the odor of moving water, and I can hear nothing unhappy.

Where I saw the children throwing something powdery at the geese, I now see the birds pecking at the ground.  The apex of the fountain is tossing the tiniest dew above it, releasing hard water droplets into a mist so fine it can whisk with the breeze, still visible.

It makes me so happy to see that residents of New Brunswick (not students) are using the campus as a park.  It makes me feel less cut off from life; it brings a sense of community to the place that otherwise feels like a microcosm--blind and irresponsible.  Just goes to show how the land on which we live is only borrowed from Gaia, and from the life that we consider 'not us'."

Direction for an Art Project

I found an interesting introspective essay about a man's journey in overcoming his depression.

It is interesting.  I like the idea of giving one's unhappiness a face.  Especially when it acts as its own entity, completely independent from what you know is your own agency.  There's something to be said for the process of creating a partition in one's mind.  Distinguishing the parts from one another.  As complexly they may be interwoven, they still operate with some independence.  There is localization of cognitions.

I've been telling myself that I'll do art.  Now I think I have a project that can give that nebulous ambition some direction.  I will give form to the parts of me that I can't stand, the parts of me that I love, and the miscellaneous parts of me that I feel deserve some kind of shout-out.

So I'll do a little reading, organize my materials, then get started on the easy stuff.  I'll work my way up to the more nuanced and difficult parts of this project as I develop a way to think about and do this internal analysis.  Now that I've settled into my new home, I'm regaining some of my old skill at reading myself.

I have two hopes for this:

*Develop some sort of voice in visual art.

*Overcome my... feelings.

Foggy Brain

I've been really busy lately.

So busy that I haven't really been able to introspect as much as Brian. But that's OK. I'm not as cool as him, anyway. i like to eat poop. a lot of poop.poop is so yummy. i like yummy things. like poop. When poop gets multiplied by a fundamental constant, it becomes introspective -- like me, but not as much as Brian is. 

(thanks, Brian and Dana, for your insightful assistance)

...as much as I normally do.  I think this is a really good thing!  My introspection has been going down a bad path.  I'd been getting less and less happy with what I was finding, because I was continually reinventing standards for myself that were unrealistic.  The introspection had become purely deleterious.  I hadn't been 'doing' things insofar as realizing tangible, positive consequences.  I wasn't laboring in a way that produced things I could reap.

Vaguely.  I feel like there's a giant block of sludge stuck between my eyes and my mind.  I've been acting more or less normal, but I've felt less aware and less conscious lately.  Incapable of integrating my cognitions.    I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know the effect is that I've been focusing on the world around me more, too.  Instead of fighting inside myself, I've been experiencing things that make me happy.

I'll still get moments where I feel like I'm about to sink into a bad place.  I'll start to drift inwards, into the aura that precedes a bout of depression.  But then I think to myself:  I am not in despair.  I can be happy.  I have reasons to be happy.  I am happy!  And then I actually start to feel good.

I'm grateful to many people for this becoming possible.  Foremost, I'm relieved that I made the decision to live with the people I do now.  I know that they're good people.  I've been laughing like never before, for each of the few days I've been living here.

I know myself much better because of last year's internal tribulation.

Now, I promise to myself that I will stay healthy.  Happy.  Safe.  I'm going to make life decisions that keep me sane, and do my best never to put myself in such a rut as I did before.  Life happens, and so does shit, but at least I promise that I will watch out for myself.

Listening to:  Pink Rabbits by The National

Initiating Summertime Activities

There are some things you just can't force.  Inspiration doesn't come because you ask for it.  Friendships don't become intimate overnight.

You have to be diligent.  And patient.  Because when you invest in something that matters, it's going to pay off.

This summer, I'll be putting in some more work of my own to make some progress towards some of the bigger, more important things I must do.

With a handful of people who like asking big questions and finding answers, I will spend a nice chunk of my time thinking about the future.  Not just my own future, either.  I just obtained a research position with the Dean of my university's Honors Program, with the goal of developing an educational platform to teach about the importance of the 21st century from the perspective of the divergent future societies it might lead to.  And he's interested, as am I and as are these other social entrepreneurs of sorts, to get started on the thinking before the academic year begins.

I'll be taking 3 summer classes to make necessary progress on my academics.  Those shouldn't take up too much time.  Fundamentals of Cell & Developmental Bio, Intro to CS, and Calc II.  So... more basics courses that I have to cover just to be mildly educated in the fields I want to weave together.  Diligence and patience.  Should keep that in mind.

I'll be learning how to art.  I've already collated a few resources that I'll be able to process once I've moved in to my first rented house.

But before I can get involved with any digital art, I'll have to solder the inside of my drawing tablet back together.  That necessitates organizing the basement of our new house into a fantastic hackerspace and second bedroom.

I'll watch some anime, play some video games, read some books.

I also have a few projects that I plan to undertake, but which are of the utmost secrecy (mostly because they're the sort of niche things that nobody would care to hear about anyway).

WHOA I don't know yet which will be the most fun, because all of it seems pretty enticing.  This will be a good summer.

Once I've moved out and senior week is over, I'll reflect properly on the school year that's almost behind me.

Autocomplete

So... autocomplete.

It's interesting, because it's what humans do all the time when they're listening to conversations.  We've taken a human cognitive model and extrapolated it to search engines, word processing, and basically anything that involves a computer receiving our input.

But shouldn't we also extrapolate the fact that it's really rude to persistently jump in at somebody's throat to finish their sentences, guess what they mean to say without giving them your full attention, to repeatedly feed somebody words that they weren't looking for?  It's frickin annoying in real life, so why on Earth does anybody think it's a good idea for google to put in extra words into my search the moment I strike the enter key?